Saturday, September 30, 2017

Taxing the Rich

The Democrats always cry tax the rich. Think about it for a minute. Say you have 20 million in the bank. That qualifies you as rich. Assume you have already paid tax on the accumulated 20 million, you leave it in a shoebox, it cannot be taxed again. However, at the current interest rates, 1.5%, you will get about 300,000 in interest over a year. This is taxable. At 33% tax rate, the person owes 100K in taxes if he isn’t in a rest home.

From a realistic point of view, the rich are not stupid enough to sit idly by while their bank accounts are milked, they are the ones already paying about 80 percent of the taxes. Irritatingly enough is the fact that 50 percent of the population pays no income taxes at all--- because “they don’t make enough money.”

The misleading statement that gets me from politicians is: “We do not need to give the rich a tax cut.” Where is the logic in this? Non-productivity is rewarded with no taxes and excess productivity is rewarded with more taxes. Kind of smacks of socialism. The guy who holds two jobs and works 16 hours a day is taxed at a higher rate than the guy who works the same job eight hours a day.

Poor people are entitled to more benefit than the middle class because they are poor. And if you are a minority, these benefits are god given rights. And guess what, if you are here illegally, you and your kids are entitled to benefits that I as a taxpayer have to pay for.

The voter cannot distinguish between the rich and the high-income earner. They think they are one and the same. These high-income wage earners are sports players, owners, doctors, Singers, various stage artists. So, tax the rich? What does that mean? If you earn a million dollars or more and get a W-2 form, they are going to tax the hell out of you. Of course, if you are a small business, you write your own W-2. Neat huh?

A doctor might form an LLC (limited liability corporation) and have his earnings dropped into that, and pays him\herself 30k a year. Naturally, the LLC picks up the mortgage payment on their home. So, they pay taxes on 30K. Not bad.

What we really need to look at, is the fact that the government doesn’t get a true estimate of earnings when the employer is the owner of the business. Look to Greece where there was a pool tax and only 5% of the population reported owning a pool, when the correct percentage was 95%.

What’s really happening, Congress is printing billions of dollars to pay for programs that there are no funds to pay for. Taxes collected verse tax money spent has no real correlation to reality.

The real question to ask, if taxing the rich is so successful, how come the national debt is now 20 trillion dollars? At what point does the debt amount become absurd? The answer to consider is that this borrowed money came from real people like you and me. We spent 40-hour work weeks saving for that rainy day and future retirement. And the government borrowed the money. The return of the physical paper money is not in question. What it might buy in the future, is what you need to consider.

Just a reminder, The Great Depression is now in its 11th year.